A 27-year Surfin' Safari

No Wipeout For Punk Band Agent Orange, Still Riding New Wave

In the 27 years since Agent Orange released its debut album, "Living in Darkness," the California trio has managed only two additional full-lengths and a smattering of EPs and singles.

Despite the lack of new product, the band has remained a popular live draw, attracting punk rockers young and old.

"We've been going pretty constantly," singer, guitarist and lone original member Mike Palm says by phone, two days into a tour that stops Tuesday in New Haven. "Last year was our busiest year ever."

Palm may not have written many songs, but he's prolific by proxy. The melodic Orange County "skate punk" sound he helped pioneer has inspired thousands of bands, some of which have taken Agent Orange's basic template - tough guitars and hummable tunes - to the top of the charts.

"I think what's happened, especially in the last year or so, is a lot of kids who maybe got into the whole punk thing through some of the mainstream bands, like Green Day or whatever, have gotten to where they've done their homework and looked into the roots of things," Palm says.

Young punks who seek out copies of "Living in Darkness" will discover a band that, in addition to incorporating pop influences, took the novel approach of referencing its home state's surf-rock past.

The album includes covers of "Pipeline" and "Miserlou," cool and mysterious instrumentals that, even in their comparatively tame original versions, seemed to hint at Southern California's seedier side.

Palm says surf and punk were natural complements, since both genres leveled rock's playing field and stirred waves of do-it-yourself creativity.

"A lot of guys who started out didn't have any ability, and it didn't really matter," he says of the '60s surf scene. "So a lot of great bands popped up around the area. Those similarities to the punk scene were obvious to me."

Just as Palm, who was 15 when he founded the band, had the foresight to lay twangy riffs atop punk rhythms, he also had the savvy to avoid penning the kinds of adolescent lyrics that might ring false later on.